Baking & Snack - June 2018 - 94

DOUGH HANDLING
else. Soon, you're just chasing sticky marbles all over
the place," Mr. Morabito said.
The key to this game of sanitary hide-and-seek
is accessibility. "It's important for suppliers to think
about how to break down the machine fast - without tools - to clean it and give free access to all parts
of the machine that can collect food materials, " Mr.
Morabito said.
For Reiser, accessibility and sanitary design is all
about simplicity, which is at the heart of FME's design. "If sanitation is complicated and difficult, then
it will not get looked at or people will do their work
incorrectly," Mr. Schmidt said.
Remember the adage, "Less is more"
... now, throw it out the window.
Think more: more horsepower, more
gearbox size, more safety factor.
FME discovered that the cost to clean a conveyor's
structure was far greater than simply making one that
wouldn't accumulate the mess in the first place. "Basic
designs must be expanded upon, so we built machines
that open for cleaning access. We redesigned our
conveyors where all structural members were totally
welded for sanitary seal and the conveyor itself was
open for full sanitation access," he said.
Staying up on downtime
With any sanitation program, the key is minimizing the
downtime. This concern is even bigger when it comes
94 Baking & Snack June 2018 / www.bakingandsnack.com
Transfer equipment with an adjustable vacuum pump helps keep slow and
sticky dough on the move.
Handtmann
to equipment that's transferring such a sticky, hard-tohandle product, especially when allergens are involved.
According to Mr. Knox, Haas' RORO design allows
for quick changeovers when bakers need to completely
swap the head with a clean spare. "Downtime is significantly reduced by exchanging the entire head and
not having to clean the parts at the production line,"
he said. "Allergen clean is easier to achieve in this way
because the complete head can be removed from the
line and disassembled without keeping the production line down."
For efficiency, Handtmann developed a cleaning
operational mode for its extruders that includes a
CIP system to remove product stuck in the equipment
before the complete teardown. "This dramatically
reduces the required cleaning time because removing
the old dough left on the equipment can be the more
time-consuming part of cleaning and sanitation,"
Mr. Zelaya said.
Bakeries equipped with drains in the production
area can take advantage of Handtmann's fully washdown design. The extruders are also offered in a mobile version that can be transported to a dedicated
cleaning and sanitation area.
Bar consumption and the latest R&D developments
are essentially asking bar producers to become all
things to everyone. And that requires them to make a
product that sticks together ... and keep it from sticking to everything else. It's creating a clean product
that tends to make a mess in the transport. As bakers
up the ante in bar innovation, suppliers of dough handling equipment will follow suit.
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